"Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists."
--from the dedication page to "It" (1986)

Friday, January 15, 2016

A Guided Tour to the Works of John Williams (Part 3: 1975-1986)

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we're back!

*****

If I were grading the periods of John Williams' career, I'd say that the span of time covered in the first section of my tour is a Bronze Age, and that the years covered in the second part are an Early Silver Age (a Late Silver Age will follow later).

Williams and Steven Spielberg, with a grumpy-looking Brian DePalma in the background

Today's post indisputably represents a Golden Age (as will the next). By virtually any standard, these years represent an astonishing artistic achievement.

Read on and find out all about it.

1975 -- The Eiger Sanction

To one degree or another, I've been a film-music fan (and a John Williams fan) since roughly the time of 1980's The Empire Strikes Back.
As with many of my hobbies, the film-music obsession tends to ebb and
flow over time, and it was at its peak during the late
nineties. During that time, it was not at all uncommon for me to go to a
local record store that sold used CDs and buy more or less whatever
film soundtracks they had that I did not already own. On other days, I
might even drive to one or two good stores in Birmingham and comb
through their new CDs, and I was always on the lookout for any
soundtracks I'd never seen before.

By that point, I
obviously knew full and well who John Williams was, and I already had a
pretty good collection of his work. Not comprehensive, by any means;
but I owned most of the soundtracks for the movies of his that I'd
seen. Once the film-music bug hit me at addiction-level strength, I
began buying even the stuff from movies I'd never seen.

The score that prompted that was The Eiger Sanction.
I bought that one because I was in the mood to buy something, and that's what was available; and because I figured if it was by John Williams it might be worth a
spin. So I took it home, listened to it, and fell in love with it. And
from there, I decided to buy ANY Williams score I saw . . . and then,
any James Horner score I saw . . . and then, any Jerry Goldsmith score I
saw. I had similar experiences with both of them, and eventually, this
led to me buying basically any score by anybody.

If
that sounds a bit like the story of a junkie looking to replicate an
especially fine high, you're probably not wrong to notice the
similarities.

That level of film-music nerdery died off
after a couple of years, but the Williams fandom never went away. The
reason why is simple: the Williams purchases continued to be rewarding,
time after time. But I still rank The Eiger Sanction as one of the stronger of the discs I bought during that period, and I enjoy it every time I listen to it.

The
movie itself is a Clint Eastwood film (he directed and starred) about an
assassin who takes on a dangerous contract in hopes of a big payoff. Or
something like that; I've never seen it. A quick bit of research tells
me the following things: it was a troubled production that included
serious injuries, including one fatality; it was a modest financial
success; it was poorly reviewed; and it led to Eastwood leaving
Universal Studios permanently.

As for the score,
it's dynamite. The main title theme is a jazzy, ominous piece written
in waltz time. That melody appears in various other guises throughout
the soundtrack album, sometimes with the romance pushed to the fore,
sometimes the danger, sometimes the swinging-jazz aspects. There is
also a good bit of very fine action/suspense scoring.

How
much of this is in the movie? I have no idea. Any film-music fan
knows that soundtrack albums often fail to adequately represent the
score as it is heard in the movie, just as the score as it is heard in
the movie often fails to adequately reflect the scope of the music that
was written and recorded. For that reason, the truly committed fan must
experience it both ways. That's why I plan to eventually sit down and
actually WATCH all of these movies I've never seen. It will be a
rewarding task to take on, I've no doubt.

It's a shame Williams and Eastwood never worked together again; that seems as if it could have been a hell of a collaboration.

1975 -- Jaws

Worth a brief mention: the original soundtrack album is great, but in some cases utilizes different takes than the takes used in the film. There is an anniversary release that used all the film takes, and a 2015 release from Intrada includes EVERYTHING. This is the sort of shit you have to be aware of if you are a soundtrack/score enthusiast. If it sounds like a miserable and demeaning hobby, that's for good reason.

Finally, here we are.

Up to this point in his career, Williams had composed a lot of good music; if he had retired immediately prior to making Jaws, he would still have left behind him a rather excellent body of work. Jaws, however, was an entirely different achievement; this was -- and is -- a masterpiece.

The duh-dum-duh-dum main theme has been parodied numerous times (including once by Williams himself, in 1941's
opening scene), and is one of those rare pieces of music that is so
widely recognized that many people can't even quite hear the music of it
anymore. Instead, I think a lot of people hear it as a sound effect
moreso than as a piece of music.

What a shame! It's
one of the most primally exciting pieces of music ever written; or, if
that seems overly hyperbolic, tack "for a movie" on the end of that
statement. There is a reason that piece of music is still remembered
-- in some cases, by people who've never even seen the movie, one
imagines -- forty years later. That reason? Perfection. It was
(pardon the pun) instrumental in the movie's success, and in case your
film-history knowledge is lacking, let me indicate for you the scope of
that success: according to Box Office Mojo, the North American box
office gross was $260 million. For comparison, there have been only
five movies so far released in 2015 which have done better than that.
But let's back up for a moment: Jaws earned that money forty years ago. Adjusting for inflation, Box Office Mojo estimates that $260 million in 1975 dollars equates to slightly more than ONE BILLION 2015 dollars.

A
few movies will make that worldwide in 2015, but nothing is going to
come within shouting distance of a billion domestic in 2015. [UPDATE: It is now January 13, 2016, and The Force Awakens appears as if it might actually make a billion domestic. If not, it is certainly going to get within shouting distance. It's an astonishing haul about which we will talk more later, but I couldn't let my not-unreasonable declaration in this post stand without comment.]

In other words, Jaws was
so big a hit that modern-day audiences really can't even conceive of
what that would be like. The counter-argument is that in 1975, there
was no Netflix, no Blu-ray, no Redbox, no video games, no Internet, et
cetera. It's a valid point; there was nowhere near as much competition
for the dollars in 1975. Still, that doesn't mean the dollars weren't
spent; they were spent, and in record numbers. Jaws became the
top-grossing movie of all-time, ushered in a new era of studio hunger
for summertime blockbusters, and changed the face of the industry
forever.

At the heart of that success? John Williams,
who would win his second Oscar for the score. Heck, even director
Steven Spielberg is on the record as saying that the music accounted for
at least half of the movie's success.

Remarkably, the score's excellence is not limited merely to the duh-dum-duh-dum. There is also some exciting sea-chase music, a droll promenade representing the clueless tourists, some atmospheric underwater-search music,
and assorted other goodness. The entire thing is great, top to
bottom. One scene I especially love is involves Chief Brody sitting at
the dinner table, depressed by the situation in which he and his town
have found themselves; his young son is observing him and mimicking his
every move, and Brody notices this out of the corner of his eye and
reacts playfully. Williams scores this small but lovely scene in a
small but lovely manner, and the end result is one of the movie's best
moments. It's proof that Williams and Spielberg alike were never purely
about spectacle and bombast; if you ever thought that, you weren't
paying attention.

Williams would spend the next forty
years making moments like that; few of them quite that great, of course,
but he got close occasionally and even exceeded it once in a while.

If I had to say what the best Williams score was prior to June of 1975, I might have a few solid candidates: Heidi, or The Reivers, or Jane Eyre, or The Eiger Sanction, or The Towering Inferno. Once Jaws was out, it
immediately became by far the best score of Williams' career, however.
It was masterful in every way, iconic through and through. And
amazingly, this would merely be the beginning of a phase for Williams,
rather than a culmination; I would argue that over the course of the
next decade, he would craft eight other scores that were either as good,
better, or almost as good. The word "masterpiece" gets thrown around a
lot by people like myself who use it carelessly, hyperbolically. But
know that in this instance, I am not in any way exaggerating: Williams'
best scores from 1975-1984 are not merely good, not merely GREAT; they
are masterful.

And the ones that aren't quite up to that level are still pretty damn great, too.

With one exception...

1975 -- Thomas and the King

Never heard of Thomas and the King?
I'm not surprised. It was not a film, but a London-based stage musical
(the only musical Williams ever composed).

In
collaboration with lyricist James Harbert and playwright Edward Anhalt,
Williams tells the story of King Henry II's friendship and professional
relationship with Thomas Beckett. Unfortunately, the resulting musical
is a complete misfire, at least if the extant cast recording is any
indication. I want to hold out a tiny amount of hope that this is
because the album (which was recorded in 1981, some six years
after the show's brief run ended) is a bit ragged-sounding. It might be
that a proper production with a full orchestra (instead of the small
ensemble of musicians this recording sounds like it had) might improve
things. It might also be that seeing the full musical, rather than
merely hearing song selections, could enhance things.

On
the other hand, nothing could improve Harbert's lyrics apart from a
full rewrite. At one point, he rhymes the exhortation "imagine it!"
with "Plantagenet."
In another song, in which Henry and Thomas are planning to build a
better England, Harbert introduces the couplet "We shall do it! / Get
down to it!"

There are a few songs which are decent (including "Am I Beautiful?",
the only song from the musical that I found on YouTube), and occasional
musical/orchestrational moments that do at least sound consistent with
what Williams had been doing in the early seventies. Overall, though,
this is very weak stuff. How much of the blame for that is due Williams
and how much should instead go to his collaborators is impossible to
say for this blogger; and in the end, it is irrelevant. It's not good,
and that is the only salient thing I have to say.

1976 -- Family Plot

Williams' first post-Jaws film
score would not turn out to be the milestone that that project had
been, but it was a milestone in its own right: it was the score for what
turned out to be the final film ever directed by industry legend Alfred
Hitchcock.

Hitchcock is, alongside Steven Spielberg
and Stanley Kubrick, one of three directors perpetually vying for the
crown of Bryant's Favorite Director. He had a lengthy career, beginning
in the 1920s as a director of silent films. He was prolific and highly
successful for six decades, and if one cares to become invested enough
in his work to march through all of it, one will be rewarded
amply.

Family Plot is not one of his more
well-known efforts, and indeed its reputation has suffered by way of not
being particularly prized by the academics and film historians who have
done the majority of his myth-making and canonizing. Most of them tend
to write off all of his movies after The Birds, which to this blogger's way of thinking is short-sighted and narrow-minded. It can be fairly argued that Family Plot lacks
the keen psychological insights that were the hallmark of the best
Hitchcock films, but so what? It's still a rip-roaring good time at the
movies.

The John Williams score is a huge part of that, too. The main theme
is a terrifically fun piece, scored for harpsichord and orchestra and
also including a gorgeous section for female choir which represents the
"psychic" subplot. Those choral elements are a foreshadowing of certain
elements of the next year's Close Encounters work.

Amazingly, Family Plot never had a soundtrack album released; not, at least, until Varese Sarabande stepped in and finally put one out in 2010. It is glorious.

1976 -- The Missouri Breaks

Before
we proceed, a quick clarification: producer Robert M. Sherman should
not be confused with either of the Sherman brothers with whom John
Williams worked on 1973's Tom Sawyer: that's Richard M. Sherman
and Robert B. Sherman, and they are of no relation to Robert M.
Sherman. But I can see how a reader would be confused by that; I was, and had to research the matter to make sure what was what and who was whom.

That aside, The Missouri Breaks was a thoroughly unsuccessful Western directed by Arthur Penn (who'd made Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man)
that starred two of the world's biggest movie stars, Marlon Brando and
Jack Nicholson. Having never seen the film, I can't tell you why it
didn't work, but I can tell you who not to blame: John Williams, who
contributed a terrific low-key score that goes in a completely different
direction from previous works like The Cowboys and The Reivers.

The highlight of the music, for me, is "Love Theme (Reprise),"
a gentle piece for guitar and harmonica that is so good that I don't
care that the movie was a failure; it's worth it having happened if only
to have brought this piece of music into the world.

There's also an ominous main-title theme
that I like a lot; its opening bass line seems to prefigure the
dread-through-repetition style of John Carpenter, and there's a terrific
middle section consisting of a rhythm section. Another standpoint cue
is a rollicking train-robbery piece.

This
score was another instance in which the as-released soundtrack album
was not entirely representative of the score Williams recorded for the
movie. The album consisted mostly of rerecordings designed to play well
divorced from image, whereas the film versions were tailored more to
the cinematic experience. In this particular case, I would probably opt
for the album recordings; they seem a bit more full-bodied. The soundtrack label Kritzerland put out a two-disc version with both album and film recordings a few years back, but it is hella sold out now.

Stephen King connection: Jack Nicholson, of course!

1976 -- Midway

For his final score of 1976, Williams worked on the WWII docu-drama Midway for
director Jack Smight, and (among others) star Charlton Heston. There
is only about thirty minutes' worth of music in the film, making it one
of the composer's leaner efforts. No soundtrack album was released at
the time (the year 1976 was a rough one for Williams collectors), but
the "Midway March"
was a staple of Williams concerts and compilations for years, as well
as patriotic-music compilations and concerts. The full score would not
be released until a 1998 re-recording by the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra; the original recordings did not hit disc until 2011!

A second march, "The Men of the Yorktown March,"
is slower-paced and more deliberate, but is also quite good. The rest
of the score is, to my way of thinking, a bit unremarkable.

1977 -- Black Sunday

1977
was what might fairly be called a watershed year for John Williams, and it began with the score for Black Sunday,
a John Frankenheimer-directed film about a fictional Black September
plot to explode a blimp over the Super Bowl, killing thousands of
people.

The movie was based on a novel by Associated
Press reporter Thomas Harris, who would go on in a few years' time to
find a profitable career as the creator of the character Hannibal
Lecter. The movie starred Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern, and was only a
modest success, thanks in part to the poorly-received release of another
football/terrorism movie, Two Minute Warning, in which Charlton
Heston tries to prevent a sniper from taking aim at a championship game.
The movie is very good, for the most part; it falls apart a bit at the
end when it becomes much too ambitious for the effects budget to handle
the requirements. At that point, only the Williams music keeps it
afloat, and if you didn't grow up during this era of movies, you'll
likely feel it doesn't stay afloat at all.

Williams' score is intense and effective, and while I wouldn't put it on a list of his best work, it certainly gets the job done. There are a few passages that sound almost as if they could have come straight out of Star Wars, and given that that score happened a mere two months later, Black Sunday proves to be a fine opportunity to look in on the work of a composer whose career was about to kick into an even higher gear.

The
score is yet another one which failed to receive a soundtrack-album
release; no such thing existed until Film Score Monthly plugged the hole
in 2010 (although a widely-circulated bootleg existed, and was so
readily available that even I found a copy at a sci-fi con).

1977 -- Star Wars

What can be said about the music for Star Wars? Plenty. Okay, let me rephrase that question: what can be said about the music for Star Wars that will fit in the space I'm going to allot for it here?

Probably
not a whole heck of a lot. I mean, there's this: it's unquestionably
one of the greatest film scores ever written. There's this: it
single-handedly made symphonic film music popular as a record-store
genre for at least the next decade. There's this: it helped make
classical music concerts and albums a viable pastime for untold
thousands -- millions? -- of people who might otherwise have never given
it the time of day. It won Williams a well-deserved Oscar, and the
soundtrack sold 4 million copies.

Any time I talk about
music in an analytical fashion, it's dodgy. I know nothing about
composition, or performance, or instrumentation, or orchestration, or
arrangement; for all I know, some of those words might be synonyms for
each other. The best I can typically do is to issue a slightly more
verbose version of "I like this," "I don't like this," "I love this," or
"I hate this." So yeah, sure, I guess I could do
a track-by-track analysis of this soundtrack; but for every track, I'd
just write some variant of the third of those four options, and who
wants to read that? Nobody.

That said, here's a partial list of my favorite tracks from the Star Wars score:

"Main Title" -- That explosion of sound at the beginning has never been rivaled by anyone.

"Binary Sunset (aka
the Force theme)" -- On the soundtrack, this is merely part of a longer
track that also contains the music which plays when the hologram of
Princess Leia is projected from R2-D2's dome. I don't know what it is
about that moment of Luke looking at the double sunset, man. Is it just
that there are two suns? Is it just that Mark Hamill is sympathetic?
Is it just the cinematography? Is it just the music? Nah, it's all
that rolled together, and who knows what else I'm not thinking of.

"Cantina Band"
-- Odds are good that I could hum every note of this weird piece of
jazz to you. (To prove this to myself, I've just done it, including the mini-drum-solo.) Odds are good that you would not enjoy that. But if you
don't enjoy the original piece, somethin' wrong wi' yo' ass.

"The Trash Compactor"
-- This isn't a cue that you hear many fans talking about all that
often, and I don't know why that is. It's a terrifically ominous piece
that (excepting the cutaways to other scenes) just builds and builds and
builds.

"Ben Kenobi's Death/TIE Fighter Attack" -- When I hear this piece, I swear to you I can practically hear Luke
Skywalker scream" No!" at the moment of Ben's death. That's the extent
to which this music is written in my brain. The second part of the
track is arguably the best action music of the score.

"The Throne Room/End Title"
-- That throne-room fanfare, brother . . . that's what music is all
about, right there. I'm a fan of all sorts of music, but not the
heaviest of metal or the slickest of pop can do what John Williams is
doing in those moments.

"Princess Leia's Theme"
-- The album version of the Princess Leia theme is easily one of the
top five loveliest pieces Williams ever wrote, and might be rivaled only
by the Love Theme from Superman, for my money.

It
might be that nostalgia is overriding my logic center, but either way I
would assert that this music is handily among the best film scores ever
written. It's been a part of my life almost as long as that life has
existed, and it's no exaggeration to say that a substantial degree of my
mental and emotional makeup sounds precisely like this.

1977 -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind

One
aspect of film scoring that most people probably never consider --
indeed, I tend to forget it unless some reminder comes my way -- is that
most scores are timed to the film. By that, I mean that the music is
written to fit within a specific time-frame corresponding to the scene
at hand. That means that a composer like John Williams is not free to
simply write a bunch of brilliant music and then trowel it onto the
image willy-nilly. It doesn't work like that. If you're dealing with a
three-minute sequence in which Han Solo and Luke Skywalker fire lasers
at enemy spacecraft, you've got a precise amount of time to deal with;
you have to match any emotional changes that might occur during the
scene, you have to account for dialogue, you have to account for sound
effects. If you want to accentuate certain moments, you have to do so
precisely.

All of this has to fit together in a very
rigid way, more often than not. For that reason, film music often does
not play well when divorced from the film itself; and even within the
film, it runs the risk of being bland and formulaic.

The
fact that John Williams has not merely avoided this problem but has transcended it so often during his career is cause for amazement. The
score for Star Wars is just as good played on its own as it is within the context of the film. The same can be said for the best cues from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is my favorite movie that carries a Williams score.

The most famous piece of music from the film is the five-note piece --
described by Steven Spielberg, when he was requesting what he wanted
Williams to compose, as a sort of doorbell-like greeting -- that
represents the musical conversation between the aliens and the humans.
This piece is used in various ways during the movie, notably as sound
effects heard by various characters in various circumstances. During
one scene, researchers visit a village in India, where hundreds of
people are chanting it after encountering an alien spacecraft. That
scene gives me chills just thinking about it.

Later, it is developed into a full-blown orchestral piece for the finale,
and this piece of music is as majestic as anything I know. When
Williams lets the orchestra loose and they play these notes in their
full statement, it's an example of art at its finest. Another moment
that stands out for me is a smaller one, but no less impactful: when Roy
is talking on the phone and pacing around the room where he's
constructed his insane sculpture, a television is in the shot with him;
he's paying no attention to it, but it begins showing images of Devil's
Tower in Wyoming, which (unbeknownst to him) is the very thing he's
obsessively been sculpting. You think he's going to fail to notice, but
the call ends abruptly, and he is looking around in frustration; his
eyes land on the television, and you can practically see the locks
inside his mind clicking open. The music
Williams employs is gentle, but insistent; it is the sound of a spirit
being set at rest, and the promise of ever greater revelations to come.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of my two or three favorite movies (in a perpetual death-match for that crown with The Wizard of Oz and 2001: A Space Odyssey),
and I'd never seen it in a movie theatre until recently. It's a great
film in any format, but if you have an opportunity to see it on a big
screen, TAKE IT.

The final sequence of the film, in
which Williams' music comes fully to the fore, is sheer magic. Notably,
it's a rare instance of the movie being edited to match the music,
rather than the other way around; that's how important the music is to
this particular film.

It's also worth underlining that Williams did both this AND Star Wars in the same year. That's a heck of a year, folks.

Worth a brief mention: as was also the case with Jaws, the original soundtrack album consisted in some cases of different takes than the takes used in the movie. The biggest example is probably the music that represents "The Conversation" between humans and aliens, using musical tones as language. I actually prefer the album version; the film version is great, too, though. There is an expanded soundtrack that contains the film versions. I say find copies of both.

1978 -- The Fury

Pity the poor movie that has to be a composer's follow-up to the one-two punch of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That's an unenviable position to be in.

The Fury was directed -- Stephen King connection alert! -- by Brian DePalma, who was hired on the basis of his success with Carrie. It starred his Carrie alumnus Amy Irving (who was Steven Spielberg's girlfriend at the time), as well as Kirk Douglas; the faintly Carrie-esque (and Firestarter-esque)
story involved telekinetics kidnapped by the government, which means
that this score is one of our greatest opportunities to hear what a John
Williams score for a Stephen King movie might have sounded like.

Oh, if only. Can you imagine Williams being hired for The Dead Zone, or Cujo, or Misery?
All of those movies have very good scores, but I can't help but
imagine Williams showing up to kick them into an even higher gear.

Williams' music for The Fury is very much in the mode of the great Bernard Herrmann, and that's no surprise: Herrmann's penultimate score, Obsession,
was for a DePalma film, and there is every indication that his
collaboration with the director would have continued if he had not
passed away (literally the same day he completed his gorgeous score
for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver). So whether DePalma asked
Williams for something Herrmannesque or whether Williams did it on his
own, it was a very appropriate decision.

1978 -- Jaws 2

One of the first big-time cash-grab sequels, Jaws 2 is a Spielberg-less sequel that is in no way in the same league as it progenitor. I say this having never seen Jaws 2, of course, which makes it a dubious statement. And yet, I know I'm right. YOU know I'm right, too.

I don't have any particular plans to ever see Jaws 2.
Apparently there is a scene in which the shark attacks a helicopter
and drags it under. I don't feel the need to take part in that sort of
bullshit.

I don't always mind sequels, even when they
are cash-grab sequels that ditch most of the first film's creative team.
However, there are some movies that I love so much that unless a GOOD
sequel is made -- maybe even a great one -- I just don't feel like I
need to swim in that pool. Jaws, The Exorcist, Psycho, The Blair Witch Project, and American Graffiti come to mind.

That said, if I ever do see Jaws 2, it's going to be for the John Williams score. Let's not count this possibility out, either.

The
score is not as good as the original -- that would be a tall order,
even for John Williams -- but it's very good, and it has remarkably few
similarities with the first film. This is true of the soundtrack album,
at least; I can't speak to the full score as it is heard in the film.

The best track is probably the end title
cue, which is lovely. "The Catamaran Race" and "Ballet For Divers" are both awfully good, too. This is definitely some of the best music I've ever
heard that was written for a movie that probably ought not to exist.

1978 -- Superman

You
kids nowadays can have your Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill and Hans
Zimmer, all of whom are perfectly talented people. But for me, there's
unlikely ever to be another Superman like Superman. Fifty
percent of that is Christopher Reeve, and the other fifty percent is
John Williams, who turned in what might be his very best score. If it isn't, it's certainly on the short-list.

In
one of the all-time great crimes against art perpetrated by the Academy
Awards, this score somehow failed to win an Oscar. It lost to Giorgio
Moroder's Midnight Express, which boggles my mind. (Oscar would give the world a right buggering in this category the next three consecutive years, too: in 1979, Jerry Goldsmith's majestic and unforgettable Star Trek: The Motion Picture lost to George Delerue's A Little Romance; Williams lost the '80 and '81 Oscars, with The Empire Strikes Back defeated by Michael Gore's Fame -- fucking Fame, for fuck's fucking sake! -- and Raiders of the Lost Ark losing to Vangelis's Chariots of Fire, which is admittedly great, but not Raiders great.
Williams would go on to lose a great many Academy Awards over the
years, and if he had as many as he deserved, his mantle could not hold
them all.)

My favorite tracks:

"Theme from Superman"
-- With the possible exception of the James Bond theme, this would get
my nomination for best theme in cinema history. And hey, look . . . I'm
a big fan of the fact that modern Hollywood is awash in superhero
movies, and I've liked most and loved more than a few of the resultant
films. But not a single one of them has had a theme for its hero(es)
that even approaches this level of quality. Danny Elfman's 1989 Batman
theme comes close, but from the current millennium...? There's nothing.
Hans Zimmer's Batman music is great, and so is his Superman music, but
they can't touch this.

"The Planet Krypton"
-- The fanfare for Superman's planet of birth is majestic and haunting,
and is good enough that it would have been easily the standout theme
for 99% of the other movies ever made. EVER. Here's, it's a b-side.
That's how good that main theme is.

"The Trip to Earth"
-- I've always been a sucker for this scherzo, which is an exciting and
soaring piece that covers Kal-El's journey to his adopted planet.

"Love Theme from Superman"
-- This is almost certainly the prettiest and most romantic piece of
music Williams has composed thus far. (In his mid-eighties now, it
seems unlikely he will top himself; but if you count this guy out, you
are a fool.) This particular recording is a concert arrangement, which
means that it does not itself appear in the movie. The theme does in
different arrangements, though, most notably in the scene in which
Superman takes Lois Lane for a midnight flight and Margot Kidder gets to
engage in some dreadful vocal stylings.

"Leaving Home"
-- The theme that comprises the majority of the latter half of this
track is referred to in most places as the Smallville theme, and, once
again, it's good enough that most directors would choke their grandmothers
to death in order to have it playing over their movie's credits. Here? It's,
like, maybe the fourth-best theme. Good lord; talk about an abundance
of riches.

"The Fortress of Solitude"
-- This lengthy track is just flat-out incredible. It restates the
Krypton theme for Clark's discovery/construction of the arctic fortress,
turns esoteric and haunting for the appearance and years-long tutelage
of a holographic version of Jor-El, and then triumphant when Superman
makes his first appearance and leaves to join (and safeguard) the world.
Ever heard the phrase "tour de force"? It may as well have been
coined to describe this piece of music. Oh how it hurts my heart to
think that this lost to Giorgio Moroder...

"The March of the Villains"
-- I guess a lot of modern viewers feel like this movie's Lex Luthor
sucks, but not me. I think Gene Hackman is great, and while I know in
my mind that Ned Beatty's Otis DOES kind of suck, I still like him.
("Otisberg?!? Otisberg?!?!?") This
march is light-hearted and goofy, but as it progresses it takes on some
edge, suggesting that these villains might have more power than you
think.

Man alive . . . this is a heck of a score, folks. Williams flung it out into the world a mere year after Star Wars and Close Encounters, both of which are roughly as great.

Who has a trifecta like that within such a brief span of time (not to mention having two other works as good as The Fury and Jaws 2 sandwiched
in between)? Honestly; name me anyone, in any field, at any period of
history. If they exist, I definitely want to know about them.

And then he follows it with this:

1979 -- Dracula

John Badham directed the 1979 remake of Dracula for
Universal, and while the movie was a mild disappointment at the time
(possibly owing to the near-simultaneous release of two other Dracula
theme movies, Love at First Bite and Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu), it has built a fanbase over the years.

Much of this is due to the lush score by John Williams, whose foot was firmly on the pedal in 1979 and was seemingly glued in place. His music for Dracula is probably not in the same league as Superman, but it's every bit as good as The Fury, and that, friends, is pretty dang good.

1979 -- 1941

To the extent it is remembered at all, 1941 is mostly remembered as a box-office flop that temporarily derailed the on-fire career of Steven Spielberg.

Thing
is, it actually did fairly well at the box office; nobody made a
profit on it, but nobody lost their shirt, either. And if you ask me,
it's not only a very funny movie, but an extremely well-made one on
virtually every technical level.

And then there's the score by John Williams. It's fantastic, and the march
is among the composer's best works. The rest of the score is a lot of
fun, too; in keeping with the slapstick tone of the film, Williams
tosses in quotations of his Jaws and Close Encounters scores
at opportune moments, but also provides a lot of music that stands
proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of his late-seventies work.
I'm particularly fond of a trilling (not "thrilling," but that too) piece of music that represents one
character's fascination with airplanes (it's probably best featured in "The Battle for Hollywood," a standout track). I also like the Benny Goodman pastiche.

Williams failed to land an Oscar nomination for either 1941 or Dracula, as the Academy thought it was more important to put forth Georges Delerue for A Little Romance and Dave Grusin for The Champ. But they also failed to nominate Jerry Goldsmith's Alien, so it wasn't merely Williams' turn to be screwed.

1980-1995 (and onward) -- the Boston Pops Orchestra

In
January of 1980, Williams took over the post as Principal Conductor for
the nationally-renowned Boston Pops Orchestra, replacing Arthur
Fiedler, who had passed away the previous summer after heading the Pops
for 49 years. Fiedler had recorded numerous successful albums with the
orchestra, so it was no small task for Williams to accept the position.

He would somehow juggle this job -- which included Evening at Pops,
a PBS television series that featured concerts by the orchestra -- with
his film-composing work (and his concert-hall compositions) for the
next thirteen years.

Williams has recorded something
like thirty albums with the Boston Pops, ranging from Christmas albums
to classical recordings (such as Holst's The Planets, which was a major influence on Star Wars)
to Broadway suites to Williams compilations to orchestral versions of
Frank Sinatra songs. I'd love to cover all of them here individually,
but will not do so, simply because it would make this series of posts genuinely unwiedly. If you're interested in exploring those
albums further, here is a good place to start.

1980 -- The Empire Strikes Back

The odds of topping a score like Star Wars must
be astronomical. Depending on your point of view, you might feel as if
Williams did not manage it; but if so, you and I part ways. Don't
worry, I still love ya; I just think The Empire Strikes Back is an even more marvelous piece of work than Star Wars is.

Williams introduces three major new themes (one for Darth Vader, one for Yoda, and one for the developing love story between Princess Leia and Han Solo), and all three are spectacular. I'm also a big fan of a track called "Hyperspace,"
which is some of the best action writing Williams has ever done. (Am I
tossing out those superlatives too often? If so, it's only because
it's true.)

I already mentioned this, but it bears
belly-aching about repeatedly: this monumental piece of excellence lost
the Oscar to the score to Fame, which would be like Abraham
Lincoln losing an election to Richard Simmons. (Granted, as I type this
my country is strongly flirting with the idea of electing Donald Trump
to be President; I think we may have already gone to first base, too.) [UPDATE: he's got at least two fingers in us, as far as I can tell from January 13, 2016's vantage point. Ugh.]

Ultimately,
I think I'd have to say that this is the composer's finest achievement.
A few upcoming films might be able to convincingly put a stake to that
claim, but for me, this is it. Which means it's all disappointment
from here, right...?

1981 -- Raiders of the Lost Ark

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones. Seems like I heard somebody say that once upon a time.

Look,
I don't need to tell you this is a great score. Do I? Maybe I do. It
occurs to me that the movie is old enough now that a blogger like me
can't take it as a given that everyone in the world has actually seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. I work with people who haven't seen it. Poor bastards.

In any case, the score is a rollicking good time from beginning to end. The main theme is
one the best-known compositions of the latter half of the century (I
say, bereft of data to prove it); but there are many standouts subthemes
and action cues, and overall the entire score works like a charm.

A few of my favorite cues include "The Basket Game"
(a comic piece that underscores Indy chasing through the streets of
Cairo trying to find Marion, who has been kidnapped and shoved inside a
huge laundry basket); "The Map Room: Dawn"
(a glorious cue which might as well be titled "The Ark Theme" and which
underscores a scene in which Indy infiltrates an ancient map room and
uses light shining through a headpiece to find the location of the Ark
of the Covenant); and "Desert Chase," which might get my vote for the best piece of action-scene film-score ever written.

In short, this is yet another A++ effort from John Williams.

1981 -- Heartbeeps

Ever heard of Heartbeeps? I didn't figure you had.

The
movie was a box-office dud that told the tale of a small group of
escaped servant robots, two of whom fall in love and raise a "child"
together. It was produced by Michael Phillips, who had previously
produced Close Encounters of the Third Kind and who convinced John Williams to score the movie for director Allan Arkush.

It starred Andy Kaufman, Bernadette Peters, Randy Quaid, and future Cat's Eye co-star
Kenneth McMillan. It was considered a bit of a turd at the time, but
it did earn an Academy Award nomination for Stan Winston's terrific
makeup.

The score by Williams
is quirky, with weird synth disco-esque synth sections that seemingly
represent the artificial nature of the characters. The synth gradually
gives way to a more symphonic orchestration that emphasizes the humanity
of these robots' emotions. Is it an obvious approach? Yeah, of
course. But it works, and Williams turned in a score that might not
rank alongside some of his other work of the era, but which is
nevertheless outstanding.

1982 -- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Hits don't get much bigger than E.T. Before
its run in theatres had ended, it had taken the crown of #1 movie
all-time at the box office, which marked the third time in seven years
that a John Williams film had accomplished that task (Jaws and Star Wars being the others). It wouldn't be the last: Jurassic Park did it again in 1993. (And the odds seem decent that The Force Awakens makes it an even five times later this year.) [UPDATE: It already has, if we're talking about North American box office. It's not going to do it on a worldwide basis, but it's doing pretty well, to say the least.]

Just as he had done for Williams on Close Encounters,
director Steven Spielberg edited parts of the film to fit the music,
rather than asking the music to fit the movie. In so doing, Spielberg
ensured that the music indeed DID fit the movie. I'd say something
hyperbolic like "in fact, the music fits like no score had ever fit
before," but that'd be a lie; by 1982, Williams had accomplished
near-perfection half a dozen times or more, and his music for E.T. is just more of the same. Brilliance and genius: ho hum, yawn.

The standout of the score is probably the "Flying"
theme. If you were a child with a bicycle in 1982 (and probably for a
solid decade thereafter), there is a very good chance that that piece of
music is The Sound Of Your Childhood. It certainly is mine. Or, at
least, it's on the album, and that album is about half John Williams.
(The other half is probably mostly Michael Jackson, with a dollop of
Duran Duran and a few James Bond theme songs. Also, the Flash Gordon theme by Queen.)

It's
not just "Flying," though; the whole score is great, ranging from the
opening in which the little alien becomes lost in the woods to the
mothership flying off at the end. One of my favorites is the scene in
which E.T. telepathically gets Elliot drunk; another is the scene in
which the house is invaded by the government.

Another
A++, guys; nothing is flawless, but this is close. It won Williams his
fourth Oscar, after several years of being shunned by the Academy in
favor of eminently less-deserving works.

1982 -- Yes, Giorgio

Yes, Giorgio was
a box-office dud in which opera singer Luciano Pavarotti made an
ill-advised attempt to become a leading man in cinemas. It was directed
by Franklin J. Schaffner, who had previously made classics such as Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil. His regular composer, Jerry Goldsmith, was unavailable (presumably due to working on Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist), so he turned instead to John Williams.

Williams was also unavailable, at least for writing the score. Michael J. Lewis got that job. However, Williams did have time to collaborate with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman on a song, "If We Were in Love," which Pavarotti performed for the movie.

It's
a lovely composition, but for me, Pavarotti nearly wrecks it. It goes
without saying that he is a wonderful and powerful singer, but I'm
unconvinced that an operatic delivery is what this particular song
called for. Melissa Manchester did a respectable version at the 1983
Academy Awards ceremony (the song had been nominated for an Oscar, but
-- rightly -- lost to "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman), but she tries to blow the roof off the joint. I'd like to hear a more intimate arrangement.

I do like the Pavarotti version, though. I'm just not sure the recorded version suited either him or the song.

Better by far is an instrumental version recorded by Williams with The Boston Pops for a 1982 album called Aisle Seat. It's a terrific album, and among other things includes a Williams-conducted version of Vangelis's Chariots of Fire theme (not as good as the original, but worth hearing).

1982 -- Monsignor

Marking the second consecutive flop for Williams after the mega-smash that was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Monsignor was
a Christopher Reeve movie in which he plays a World War II veteran who
becomes a priest, has an affair, gets involved with the Mafia, and
generally does things in perhaps an unsuitable manner. The film was a
flop, and earned Williams his one and (thus far) only Worst Score
nomination from the Golden Raspberry Awards. (The Razzies also
foolishly opted to nominate Ennio Morricone's music from The Thing, but they awarded the big prize to Kit Hain for The Pirate Movie).

The
score is by no means a classic, but it's pretty good; it's roughly
comparable to the sort of thing Williams was doing during the early part
of the seventies, and maybe even a hair or two better than that. The main theme
(which, according to my liner notes, are actually the movie's end
credits) is a lovely downbeat waltz; this is certainly good enough that a
Razzie would be out of the question.

At some point in
1982, Williams had written a concert piece called "Esplanade Overture,"
which was written for Boston's Charles River Esplanade, where the Pops
give concerts during the summer. That piece has seemingly never been
recorded, but Williams used it as the backbone for certain parts of the Monsignor score (including the tracks "The Meeting in Sicily" and "Reunion in Italy").

1983 -- Return of the Jedi

I've never been in a situation like this and therefore have no idea: if you are the composer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back,
the scores for which are among the very finest ever recorded, is the
pressure for the next film in the series unbearable? Frankly, I don't
know how it could be anything less.

If that is indeed the case, John Williams, in scoring Return of the Jedi, proved to be completely up to the challenge. I personally would rank it third out of the three original-trilogy Star Wars scores, but in doing so I would clarify that it is not meaningfully less great than the other two; put them in any order and it's fine by me.

For this culminating film, Williams wrote four major new themes: one for Jabba the Hutt; one for the Ewoks; one for the Emperor; and one for the Luke/Leia relationship, which undergoes a bit of a change in this movie.

There are also an abundance of standout action cues, including: Luke's assault on Jabba's sail barge; "The Forest Battle"; and "Into the Trap," the music for the leadup to the attack on the Death Star. All of those are classics.

With Return of the Jedi under
his belt, Williams could justifiably claim to have completed the finest
trilogy of film scores in existence in 1983. In 2015, I might hold
Howard Shore's The Lord of the Rings in slightly higher regard.
Then again, I might not. Which way is the breeze blowing today?
That's which way I'll go, and neither way will lead me wrong. And
either way, Williams' music for those first three Star Wars films represents a high-water mark for an entire medium.

It's not every guy who can claim to have achieved that sort of thing.

By
the way, in case you were wondering, Williams was screwed out of yet
another Oscar for this one. He did receive a nomination, but lost to
Bill Conti's The Right Stuff. Great score; not Return of the Jedi great, but great.

1983 -- Out of This World

Out
of sheer necessity, I won't be talking individually about most of the
albums Williams recorded with the Boston Pops. They are all worth
mentioning, but including them would turn an already-unwieldy post into a
monster, so we're just not gonna.

I do think a few of
them should be included for one reason or another, though, including
this one. The best reason for that is that it contains a concert
arrangement of Williams' Return of the Jedi Jabba the Hutt theme;
the theme does appear in the film and on some versions of the
soundtrack, but only in abbreviated form. For Out of This World, Williams put together a terrific concert version
that is almost a tuba concerto in miniature; it is played by Chester
Schmitz, for whom Williams would write a proper (and much longer) tuba
concerto a couple of years later.

For fans of Star Wars
music, I would say this album is essential on the grounds that that
version of the Jabba theme has never (to my knowledge) been bettered.
There are other good tracks, though; several other concert pieces from Jedi are included (all of them familiar to anyone with one of the soundtracks), as is a lengthy E.T. suite.
You can get all of that elsewhere, though. Apart from the Jabba theme, the
draws here are Williams-conducted versions of "Also Sprach Zarathustra"
(popularized by Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey), Jerry Goldsmith's Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alexander Courage's television star Trek theme, Stu Phllips' Battlestar Galactica, and the Twilight Zone theme by Marius Constant.

GREAT stuff.

1983 -- Violin Concerto * Flute Concerto

By
1983, John Williams mania was probably at its apex. As a result,
Williams finally began to be taken seriously as a concert-hall composer,
and Leonard Slatkin conducted The London Symphony Orchestra in premiere
recordings of two non-film pieces: 1969's Flute Concerto, and 1976's Violin Concerto.

I
often find myself struggling to connect with Williams when he steps
outside the world of film composition. This is not to say that I
dislike his concert-hall pieces; I don't. I am only suggesting that I
have little connection to them.

I suspect that this means I'm simply not paying enough attention.

1984 -- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

People having been fighting for over thirty years now about whether or not Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is
any good. I can't bring that conflict to an end, but I can lob a
volley across the lines: yeah, it's pretty damn good. As good as Raiders of the Lost Ark? No. But if you told me you preferred it to the first movie, I wouldn't argue with you.

Surely
we can all agree that the score by John Williams is yet another
damn-near-unimpeachable classic, though, right? There's nothing bad to
be said about this music, so far as I can tell. It's glorious, top to
bottom. Some of my favorites:

"Anything Goes"
-- The movie's opening sequence remains one of the highlights of
Spielberg's directing career, and Williams cooked up a marvelous
Cantonese translation of the Cole Porter classic. It must sound rather
bizarre if you have no context for it; but that's your problem, bub.

"Short Round's Theme"
-- Methinks Spielberg and Lucas missed out massively by not having
Short Round return in the later films. And hey, all this talk of
rebooting the series makes me wonder: why not spin off Short Round into
his own series of films? Yeah, I know; never gonna happen.

"Nocturnal Activities"
-- I guess almost everybody hates Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott, but not
me; I enjoy what she's laying down. Even if I didn't, I'd enjoy the
will-they-or-won't-they scene between her and Indy, partially because of
the lovely John Williams music.

"Bug Tunnel / Death Trap"
-- The setpiece in which Indy is trapped inside a collapsing room is
one of the movie's highlights, and the music complements it perfectly:
intense, relentless, powerful.

"The Temple of Doom"
-- The Hindi -- Sikh? (I confess I have no idea which of these
designations I should be using, if either) -- equivalent of a Satanic
invocation, this piece of music remains one of the most frightening I
have ever heard. The choral performance on this recording is awesome.

"Slave Children's Crusade"
-- This kickass march represents the liberation of the ensalved
children by Indy and Short Round. Tell me again why Short Round
shouldn't have his own movies?

The score earned Williams yet another Oscar nomination; it lost to Maurice Jarre's A Passage to India.
Sorry if I'm a broken record on this subject, but Williams has been
screwed out of more Oscars than most people will ever even dream of
being nominated for.

1984 Summer Olympics

Disappointingly, this has never been issued on CD, which seems like a major oversight.

By
1984, John Williams was in his tenth year of creating iconic movie
themes. He'd been working in the industry for much longer, of course;
but what I mean is that since 1975, he had regularly been composing
pieces of music that immediately became -- and are still to this day --
recognizable the world around. The Jaws theme, the Star Wars theme, the five-note Close Encounters theme,
the theme for Superman, Darth Vader's Theme, the Indiana Jones theme,
E.T.'s theme; at bare minimum, that's six pieces within a decade that
are extremely well known.

What,
then, must the odds be of writing a piece of music that arguably trumps
them all? Astronomical. But that's (arguably) just what Williams did
in creating his Olympic Fanfare and Theme
for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. In the three decades since, I
cannot even begin to imagine how many people must have heard and enjoyed
that piece of music; I can't say for sure whether it is used
extensively at the events and ceremonies, or if other nations'
television broadcasts feature it the way NBC's do here in America, but
if they do then it is entirely possible that this is one of the
most-heard compositions in the history of the world. Wrap your mind
around that for a moment.

Either
way, it's a phenomenal piece of music. When the orchestra kicks into
overdrive around the three-minute mark, my eyes get a little watery.

I
was ten years old when these Olympics happened, and I'd gone to San
Antonio to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks. Because we lived
in Alabama, we didn't get to see them terribly often, so I was thrilled
to go visit them for a while. The Olympics were going on at the time,
and I remember that being all anybody talked about, and I saw a lot of
the games on television. I don't remember hearing the music, but I'm
sure I must have; and I wonder if it would have blown my mind to know
that it had been written by the man who wrote Star Wars?

I'm guessing that's a "yes."

1984 -- The River

I cannot tear my eyes away from how poorly the heads have been placed on the bodies on this poster. That's bad Photoshop before Photoshop even existed.

For his final trick of 1984, Williams reteamed with director Mark Rydell for The River,
which tells the tale of down-on-their-luck Tennessee farmers who have
to face all manner of adversities, culminating in one produced by Mother
Nature. The film starred a young Mel Gibson and Carrie White herself,
Sissy Spacek. Spacek earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and
Williams earned his second nod of the year for his music. He lost for
both this and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and I prefer
to believe that the voters simply didn't know which one to give him the
statue for, so opted instead to give it to Maurice Jarre. (Jarre, of course, is no slouch, so he probably deserved an Oscar in his own right.)

The
score is a bit of a throwback to Williams' '70s style, which is
appropriate, given that that was when he did most of his work with
Rydell. The main theme
is terrific, and almost sounds like it could have been the theme music
for some early-eighties soap opera. That sounds like an insult; it
isn't.

The River cannot
quite add up to some of the other scores Williams had done in recent
years, but it's very good, and there's more to it than the one theme.
I'm very fond of a track called "Ancestral Home,"
which seems to my ears to be a foreshadowing of the sort of thing he
would do for director Oliver Stone during the next phase of his career.

1985 -- America, the Dream Goes On and Pops In Love

Let's check in on the Boston Pops albums again real quick, starting with America, the Dream Goes On. It includes the title song "America, the Dream Goes On,"
which has lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. The song was several
years old by the time it made its appearance here; it had been performed by Dionne Warwick in 1982 on the Norman Lear television extravaganza I Love Liberty,
and may have been written expressly for that show (I'm speculating
about that; I've found nothing to indicate whether it was or wasn't).
It was also performed by Johnny Mathis in 1984 at an Olympic Gala, and would later be given treatments by John Denver (at the July 4, 1986 concert celebrating the reopening of the Statue of Liberty) and Marie Osmond (in a patriotic television special that was also called America, the Dream Goes On).

I'll
take any of those performances over the one presented on the disc,
which is a bit staid for my tastes. The song isn't bad, but you kind of
expect more from early-to-mid-eighties Williams.

As
for the rest of the album, it's solid; it includes other patriotic
pieces such as "Fanfare for the Common Man," "Battle Hymn of the
Republic," "America the Beautiful," and "When the Saints Go Marching
In." If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, you're bound to enjoy
this album.

I'm not a hundred percent sure of this, but I believe Pops In Love may
have been the first BPO/Williams album I bought that did not consist of
music composed by Williams. I found it at a Sam Goody -- remember
those? -- back in the day, and bought it simply because the name "John
Williams" was on it.

I did not regret it. This is a terrific album, and it includes some of the most beautiful music ever written: Fauré's "Pavane," Debussy's "Claire de Lune"
(which, for my money, is THE most beautiful piece of music ever
written) and "La fille aux cheveux de lin," Albinoni's "Adagio in G
minor," Saint-Saëns' "The Swan," Satie's "Gymnopédie" Nos. 1 and 2 (#2
being a strong contender for that crown I just awarded "Claire de
Lune"), Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile from "String Quarter, Op. 11,"
Ravel's "Pavane for a Deceased Princess" (not entirely sure that's a
love song, but it sure is lovely), Pachelbel's "Canon," and a terrific
version of Ralph Vaughan William's "Fantasia on Greensleeves."

I
had a friend in college who had played in an orchestra earlier in her
life, and she pooh-poohed this album specifically and Williams in
general. Maybe she knows something I don't know; if so, I'm content in
my ignorance.

1985 -- Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra

Chester Schmitz performing with the Boston Pops circa 1971

In
May of 1985, Williams debuted his Tuba Concerto, which was performed by
the Boston Pop's resident tubist (is that a word?) Chester Schmitz. As
far as I know, there is no recording of that performance, or of Schmitz
performing it at all; but the Tuba concerto appears to be one of the
most frequently-performed of all Williams' concert-hall compositions.
It's also one of my favorites: you can actually hum parts of it!

I'm not having much luck finding a decent recording on YouTube, so you're on your own with this one.

1985 -- Themes for NBC News

Just
as his "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" has likely had a reach exceeding even the largest of his blockbuster movies, it is quite possible that
the theme he wrote for NBC's nightly newscast in 1985 has been heard by
more people than any of his famous film themes.

Known as "The Mission,"
this is an exciting and stately piece of music (is that a
contradiction?) that ranks quite favorably alongside stuff such as
"Flying" from E.T.

There
has not, to my knowledge, been a proper release of the actual versions
recorded in 1985; the one I linked to just now is a concert-hall
rerecording that appeared on a Boston Pops album a few years later.

But
wait! There's more! In fact, there seems to have been more than just
the one theme; there were at least four of them, which each serve as a
separate section of a four-part suite that was seemingly titled "The
Mission" collectively but is not the same thing as the version of "The
Mission" that was expanded for concert-hall performance.

Confused yet? (It gets worse; the same year, Williams scored an episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories titled "The Mission," which aired on NBC and -- obviously -- has nothing whatsoever to do with the news themes.)

This
is my understanding of how it breaks down (and please bear in mind that
this may not be entirely accurate, since I'm working from YouTube
sources):

"The Mission, Part I: NBC Nightly News Theme" -- This is the theme that was later expanded and rerecorded under the title "The Mission" by Williams and the Boston Pops.

"The Mission, Part II: Fugue for Changing Times"
-- Also known as "Before Hours Theme," this consists entirely of
material that is not part of the concert version of "The Mission." In
other words, this is a different thing altogether.

"The Mission, Part III: Scherzo for Today" -- This piece served as the theme music for the Today show, and might still for all I know. About forty-five seconds into it, it turns into the NBC Nightly News theme for about thirty seconds, but it ends as it began: its own thing.

"The Mission, Part IV: The Pulse of Events" -- This piece served as a theme for Meet the Press,
and sounds like an alternative version of "Fugue for Changing Times."
Or perhaps one might be thought of as a sequel to the other; they are
by no means identical.

There
is close to eight minutes when you take all four parts together, of
which the concert version represents less than half. Was there other
stuff composed by Williams in 1985 for NBC that I know nothing about?
It's entirely possible. Maybe someday, somebody will take the time to
put the original recordings out on a CD (paired with something else if
indeed there is not enough to warrant its own separate release) and
explain it all to me. In the meantime, thanks be to YouTube.

1985 -- Amazing Stories

In
1985, Steven Spielberg was about as on-top-of-the-world as a fella can
get. He used the enormous clout he had in Hollywood to get himself a
television series, one which he hoped would revive the fantasy-anthology
format of such stalwarts as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (albeit with a lighter touch -- usually -- than those spooky shows).

He
got NBC to greenlight two seasons up front as part of the deal, and
over the course of those two seasons he attracted directors such as
Peter Hyams, Bob Balaban, Burt Reynolds, Bob Clark, Phil Joanou, Clint
Eastwood, Joe Dante, Martin Scorsese, Irvin Kershner, Brad Bird, and
Robert Zemeckis, to name a few. Other directors included Stephen King
associates such as Timothy Hutton, Tobe Hooper, Tom Holland, and Mick
Garris.

Spielberg
himself directed the first and fifth episodes of the first season,
"Ghost Train" and "The Mission." The former involved a young boy, his
grandfather, and a long-overdue train; the second was an hour-long
episode about a WWII bomber plane whose crew finds itself in a sticky
situation.

Unsurprisingly, Spielberg drafted John Williams in to score both episodes, as well as the memorable theme music
for the series. Neither of the episodic scores is what I'd call
top-shelf Williams, but both are solid and sound very much of a piece
with the other sorts of things the composer was doing at around the same
time. There is a three-part, six-disc series of soundtracks from
Intrada that contains every note of the two Williams scores, as well as
episodes from other film-music luminaries such as James Horner, Bruce
Broughton, George Delerue, Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith, David Newman,
Thomas Newman, Leonard Rosenman, Alan Silvestri, and Michael Kamen.
It's a hell of a lineup, and while none of them does career-best work
or anything like that, those six discs are well worth owning for
film-music geeks.

1986 -- SpaceCamp

According
to the liner notes for the recent CD rerelease of this soundtrack by
Intrada, Williams ended up composing the music for SpaceCamp for one reason above all others: Steven Spielberg had delayed the making of his proposed musical version of Peter Pan, so Williams had a hole in his schedule. SpaceCamp fit into it nicely, so he accepted the job.

Prior to the film's release, the Challenger space
shuttle exploded, killing its crew and (some might say) the long-term
future of the American space program. It also killed the box-office
prospects for SpaceCamp, which is mostly a forgotten film in 2015.

The music is good; not quite up to the A++ standards of much of his eighties scores, but perfectly enjoyable.

The
sample I just linked to is not actually a version from the film, by the
way. Instead, I used the version of the end credits that was performed
by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra under conductor Erich Kunzel for the
sci-fi compilation album Star Tracks II. For years and years, that CD was the only piece of music I had from SpaceCamp, and I treasured it; the soundtrack for SpaceCamp was
only released on CD in Japan until relatively recently, and even that
was out of print, which meant that it was a tough find for Williams nuts
like myself.

Maybe
it's because I heard Kunzel's version first (and possibly because it was my sole exposure to the score for years), but I actually prefer his arrangement to the one Williams uses
for the film. It's a bit more lively, a bit grander; Kunzel seems to
bring out something even more majestic than what was already there. (By
the way, he's done quite a few albums over the years, many of them
film-music-centric, and many of those including pieces by Williams. The
ones I've heard are all good, so if you ever run across one, it's
probably worth your time.)

1986 -- "Liberty Fanfare"

The
centennial of the Statue of Liberty was celebrated on July 4, 1986, and
Williams was commissioned to compose a fanfare which would celebrate
the event. It was played live at a concert given by the Boston Pops
that day at the site; President Reagan addressed the nation following
the concert.

That's how big a deal John Williams was in 1986.

The Liberty Fanfare
is pretty terrific; it's a distant second to his Olympic Fanfare, and
always seems to suffer in comparison when I hear the two in close
proximity to each other. But that's probably an unfair comparison, and
taken on its own merits, it's a damn fine fanfare.

*****

Man, alive; I'm telling you, that's a heck of a run. I've said this before and will say it again: if you know of any artist in any field who put together a decade(ish) of work up to par with what Williams did here, please let me know. I will want to check their work out.

17 comments:

I haven’t seen “Family Plot,” actually. I’ve got maybe 10 Hitchcock films I’ve still never seen. That’s a fun thing to look forward to doing in the future.

I think both “Jaws” and “Star Wars” are great films even if they had different music, but it’s impossible to really imagine, as the music is such an integral part of both. (Even more with “Star Wars.” I’m convinced at least 60% of people’s adoration of the Jedi is based on John Williams and the sound fx. It combines to stimulate – and in some, overload – the pleasure centers of the brain so well.) I say this with no derision – how can you NOT love these soundtracks? Particularly “Star Wars,” which along with the James Bond theme and perhaps Porkofiev’s soundtrack to Alexander Nevsky (or Hunt for Red October as an alternate soundtrack) will be remembered as the 20th century’s coolest pieces of music by future civilizations or alien archaeologists.

Also “The Map Room” from Raiders. So, yeah, John Williams is making everyone look good, the same way Mozart and Beethoven did for their respective compatriots.

The coolest part about Lego Star Wars, by the by, is the music blaring full-blast, re-sequenced a bit here and there, but allowing yourself complete immersion in the soundtrack mythos. Lego Indy is great for this as well. (Perhaps unsurprisingly.)

I’ve never seen “The Missouri Breaks” either. I like “Bonnie and Clyde,” but otherwise I’m not a huge Arthur Penn fan. He did one of those shorts for “Lumiere,” as well, a particularly awful one if memory serves.

Excellent write-ups all around, but particularly the ”Close Encounters” section. I’m willing to bet from reading this, actually, that you’re one of the few folks who may appreciate a book called “Settling the Score” by Kay Kalinak. She’s a professor at my old college and writes about silent films and in particular old school composers. But that book is really for the hardcore enthusiast/ philosopher of the medium itself.

Good lord you never saw “Jaws 2!?” What the hell IS this? Immediately go back in time and watch it 7 or 8 times in the summer between 7th and 8th grade; you’ll need to develop the right kind of nostalgia-spot to enjoy it later in life. (After the requisite too-cool-for-these-sorts-of-things plays out, of course.) I think it’s a legitimately well-made production – I mean, the difference between it and the other “Jaws” sequels is immediately evident, but also just as a 70s/80s-high-school-era sort of thing, it’s fun to watch. (When I see this or other things like this now, I can’t help but think oh wow, these were my babysitters.) Sure, a shark takes apart a helicopter, but it scared the crap out of me as a kid to think of almost being rescued and then have this horrifying locomotive with a mouthful of butcher knives dismantle both the adult authority and mode of rescue right before my eyes. I don’t know – I can’t feel too harshly about “Jaws 2.” I don’t think it’s a bad film nor dilutes the majesty of “Jaws.” But, I can hang with the idea of just sticking with the first one, particularly if you’ve no time machine to see it at the proper time.

Hard to believe these films lost out to the films they did, but that’s the Oscars for you. Every year.

I've heard numerous people say that "Jaws 2" is a lot of fun. I probably will give it a shot at some point. I really want to do a Williams-films watchthrough at some point, actually, which would be madness but FUN madness. So maybe then!

"Settling the Score" does indeed sound like the sort of thing I would enjoy. Thanks for the tip!

My favorite Arthur Penn film -- I've only seen a handful -- is "Little Big Man." I'm actually not a huge fan of "Bonnie and Clyde." It's good, but it's never resonated with me.

You almost just convinced me to become a video-gamer again based on those Lego descriptions. I used to play "Shadows of the Empire" on N64 for hours on end simply because the music (much of it from "The Empire Strikes Back") entranced me.

I full agree on the point about people's love for these movies being at least 60% tied to the music. I've said this before, but it always bears repeating: music in films is sadly underappreciated in general.

Once while a group of friends and I were driving up to Boston, we had the “Return of the Jedi” soundtrack on and all of us simultaneously fist-pumped for the “Yub Nub!” part of the Ewok Victory Song. Not to end this anecdote on a downer note – because it’s still an “upper” memory for me – but everyone in that car but myself is dead now. Weird. But it actually says something about that song to me and how it fits into my life/ brain and is a triumphant thing. I did not expect to really go in this direction in my comment here, but hey, Allay Loo Ta Nuv. (Allay Loo Ta Nu-u-uv-vv!!)

Bookmarked these ones I haven’t heard between “Jedi” and “Temple of Doom” as well as some of these other Boston Pops recordings later. Looking forward to those. I’m forever amazed at people who don’t love “Temple of Doom” or who prefer “Last Crusade” to it. Unlike “Jaws 2,” this isn’t just nostalgia talking; “Temple of Doom” is a brilliant film and as one of the pop culture sites out there exhaustively proved, it is the essential characterization film for Indy. Maybe it’s Willie and Short Round that throw people off. I guess I can understand that, but sheesh – how much other ass does a film have to kick to overlook two more or less harmless elements? And Short Round’s kind of awesome anyway. But more to your purpose here, the music is brilliant. (To answer your question, the Thuggee cult of Kali is Hindi, yes, not Sikh. Sikhs are neither Hindu nor Muslim.)

God that Olympic fanfare is awesome. I used to have a floppy disc Olympics game that had a chiptune version of it that I sometimes can hear an echo of in my head. And I had no idea Williams composed the NBC News theme, for real, wow.

You really are throwing an impressive spotlight on the man’s work, here. His career is remarkable.

You've never seen Jaws 2?? I'm genuinely surprised. I may be its biggest fan. Of course, I make no claims that it holds a torch to the original, and at the end of the day is sort of a shark-slasher movie hybrid, but it's got stuff going for it to make it worth a peek. Scheider gives a great performance, as good if not arguably better than his work the first movie. There are more than a few intense moments of suspense to be found. And, of course, Williams' score, which is undoubtedly the reason those moments work.

Just saw Badham's Dracula for the first time recently. It's not bad, but the music is what I enjoyed the most about it; I should pick that soundtrack up.

I love Missouri Breaks. Hugely underrated movie that's just now getting its proper due thanks to a blu-ray release last year. I also love The Fury, and the soundtrack is actually one of my personal favorite of Williams' impressive oeuvre. I listen to the LP while I write all the time.

Great undertaking! Very fun to read, definitely takes me back, but good god man when do you sleep??

I'd never seen "The Fury" until last year, and it was writing this series of posts that got me to do it. I liked it! I'm not the world's biggest DePalma fan, but I thought it was a solid flick more or less from start to finish. The music is great on its own, but in the movie it's fantastic.

Jaws 2 is a slasher movie, pure and simple. Depending on your feelings on the genre, your mileage may vary. I do think it's probably better than 99% of slasher films, it also features a terrific performance by Scheider and of course a wonderful score by Williams. Is that enough to justify its existence? I don't know, but for better or worse it does exist, and I do think it's worth watching.

Do you like Halloween II? If so, I'd guess you'll like Jaws 2. Both are meaner, more violent and fairly competently made sequels to timeless classics.

I like "Halloween II" relatively well. I didn't the first time I saw it -- in fact, I hated it (LOATHED it) then -- but when I rewatched it last year, I thought it was quite a bit better than I'd given it credit for.

1. Agreed, with the possible exception of the Big Moment in Empire.2. Oooooooh...that's a pretty good pick. For me, I think it'd be the musical conversation in Close Encounters; but yeah, great stuff, no question.3. My #1 on that: Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti as he's walking out of the radio station, turning back and seeing Wolfman Jack in action. That's about as sublime as it gets.

That twin-suns scene really is something, though. It was always one of my favorite movie moments, practically for as long as I can remember being alive. It's so simple, but also immediately and impactfully real -- and all the more real for how simple it is. The music really vaults it into the stratosphere, but everything about it is great, too.

The real question: is it the all-time best Star Wars moment of the whole series?

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I would certainly rank that moment near the top of my list, along with a few others. Yoda using the force to lift Luke's crashed X-Wing is a beautiful scene with more brilliant work from Williams. Luke refusing the Emperor's offer and turning away from a possible irrecovable descent into darkness by tossing his weapon at the awful creature standing before him is such a powerful and uplifting scene for me, one that is not always listed on these type of lists.

And of course Anakin's wonderful and heartfelt monologue about sand in Episode II….

That precise reason is why it's taken me this long to own that set of Blu-rays. But in the wake of the past couple of movies, I've been jonesing for it, so even though those are not necessarily the versions I'd like to own, I'm looking forward to the commentaries and whatnot.

This reminds me that I need to invest in a functional laserdisc player -- I've got that killer box set of the originals in that format, but no way to play them!

Shit, I'm going to eBay right now to see if I can solve that problem...